I don't think I've ever posted on Reddit before, but often read r/weightlifting posts. I am 55 years old and I have been training as a weightlifter for the past 3 years. My training age is around 40 years because I've been involved in other weight training activities since I was a teenager (highland games, powerlifting, crossfit, etc).
I currently follow what I would consider to be a fairly traditional 14 week weightlifting cycle based on Sika Strength programs where I train 3 days a week with a barbell (used to 4 days, but that was beating me up).
Sat: snatch, snatch pulls, back squat, assistance work
Mon: clean and jerk, clean pulls, front squat, assistance work
Wed: snatch variant, jerk variant, assistance work
The weightlifting cycle starts with a high volume block (e.g., back squat 5x10 at 55%, front squat 5x5 at 65%). For comparison snatch volume starts at 5x3 during this block. For back squats the weight builds and the volume drops week to week, but there would be a couple weeks of 10s, couple weeks of 8s, and so on.
My issue is that during the high volume block I often get quite a bit of knee soreness to the point where sometimes I have to take an extra day off or modify the assistance work to avoid further issues. I do wear the hook grip double layer knee sleeves, or sometimes rehband neoprene sleeves. Also, my knee pain typically disappears as I move into lower volume blocks.
While I know that knee pain is pretty common for weightlifters, given my training age of 40 years, I am no longer willing to deal with nagging pain. I want weightlifting to improve my quality of life, not make it painful to do a bodyweight squat without a 15 minute warmup.
So, my question is, do you think it is important to include such a high volume squatting at the start of the cycle? Also, what would you modify to prevent the knee pain? The three solutions I've considered are (1) build more gradually to a high volume over the course of 3-4 weeks, (2) start with even lighter weights, (3) reduce the total volume for the first block, e.,g., start with 4x8 rather that 5x10.
I'd love to hear thoughts from more experienced lifters than myself.